Is the biblical person Job's experience, the analogy to something much bigger just happening to all humanity?

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Of course it is, that’s why they put the story in the Bible.

First I must dispense with the boilerplate. Not everything you read in the Bible is intended to be taken as literal truth. The ancient Hebrews were deeply literary people, steeped in allegory and awash in metaphor. It’s only the so-called ‘fundamentalist’ Christians that insist on the literal truth of every word in the Bible. Every word in the Bible certainly carries truth, just not necessarily literal truth.

That nasty business out of the way, let’s discuss Job. Job is the third of the ‘wisdom’ books, works intended to convey God’s teaching in a more direct fashion. If you can understand the message behind the three books, you basically understand God and can enter into the covenant arrangement he promised all of us.

If you can’t grasp the meaning, then the gifts of God will forever escape you. It’s not really that God refuses to grant them to you, just that you’ll fritter them away. Proverbs is ‘basic’ wisdom. Do these things and God will reward you. Ecclesiastes digs a little deeper. Why is the world the way it is? Why can’t we change it?

Job deals with an even deeper subject. God freely gives, but what if God starts taking away? What can you determine, should God decide not to live up to his promise?

And so Job has to deal with this exact scenario. God takes everything Job has, not because of anything Job did, but simply on a dare. God understood Job’s piety and how Job would respond. And so God was able to take the opportunity to multiply Job’s blessings. It all makes sense from God’s point of view, which we are privy to as the readers of the story.

Job, of course, can’t make heads or tails of any of it. And that mirrors our position as mere mortals in a world where the Lord rules over all. Job even gets the opportunity to ask God why, and God simply turns the question back on Job.

We are humans, and God is God. That’s just the way it is. That’s the fundamental wisdom of the Bible, on top of which everything is built. Job is the everyman about whom God understands everything, and about God, Job understands nothing.